Epiphany alert: Taking responsibility means taking control

Jeff: I confess, I’ve been a little off my game this week. But you would be, too, if you started your week with sucky news from your doctor.

It took days just to for me to come to the realization that what he had to say shook me. Then a few more days to deal with said shaking. I haven’t even gotten to the point of dealing with what he actually had to say. Frankly, that’s going to take a while.

No, I don’t have some bizarre strain of Asian flu. I’m not suffering from incurable Cancer. You’ve heard the phrase “new lease on life”? I feel like God just asked me if I’d like to renew that lease or just go month-to-month.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This tale actually starts about 11 years ago, when I got a call from my company’s benefits broker. The company had purchased a rather large insurance policy on me, and she was calling to tell me that the underwriters had turned us down. She said she couldn’t say why because of legal restrictions. When I pressed her, she said something I’ll never forget. “As your friend, you should see your doctor. Today.”

Oh crap.

About two hours later — an earlier appointment wasn’t available — I learned that my body chemistry was massively out of whack. I was diabetic, and dangerously out of control. The doc introduced me to a nutritionist and a personal trainer, and the three of us became very close. Three months of strict dieting and pill-popping later, and I’d knocked the diabetes right out of my system. I wasn’t quite half the man I’d been, but I’d shed a solid 20 percent of my weight. And my A1C was down to 5.9. (This blood test measures long-term blood sugar levels. A score of 7.0 or higher means diabetes. A score of 10 means big trouble.)

I was cured!

And for a while, it seemed like I was. I went over two years with zero medication. For years after that, the combination of weights and walking overcame the occasional burger and fries, and I even treated myself to a non-diet soda with my buttered popcorn at the movies. Over the years, that extra hour of sleep started replacing the gym, and five-miles-a-day every day became a mile or two every other day, except when it was raining, except when I worked late, except when something good was on TV.

Then BAM! practically out of nowhere and completely unexpectedly, my weight climbed past 220 and my A1C jumped to 7.5.

Then, last week, it jumped again. To 9.8.

The doc explained to me that it probably isn’t even my fault, that even skinny people with perfect diets can suffer from a pancreas that’s just run out of steam. My body, he explained, has become so desensitized to my own insulin that my pancreas simply can’t make enough to keep up. And so I am apparently transitioning from insulin-resistance to insulin dependence. (That means I might be trading the pills for the needle.)

If — and in my mind I see that in capital letters with huge bold air quotes — I can get diet and weight calibrated, and if — again, big, floating, ironic air quotes — the new medicine does its job, we can win this war.

It’s particularly telling that while I got a new pill regimen and diet to work on, twice as much of my visit to the doc was spent talking about how “normal” my life will be taking insulin shots several times a day.

Ours is becoming a culture of victimization, where we’re owed something, where nothing is our fault, where it’s always somebody else’s problem. The concept of “personal responsibility” is hard to find.

It would be wonderful if I could buy into the idea that what I’m going through is somehow not my fault. I honestly believe dealing with this life-altering situation would be easier if I could blame it on a bad pancreas, a vengeful god or some faceless corporation’s illegal dumping. It might even be fun to publish a best-selling tell-all and go on The View and blame my parents for my success (and the faulty DNA they gave me). But the fact of the matter is that I did this to myself. Repeatedly.

For a situation in which I no longer have any control, I claim complete responsibility.

In claiming ownership, I’m beginning to find a small sense of control after all.